But tech experts disagree.

Third-party games - including Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - look "dramatically better" on Wii U than on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has claimed.

"The specs are quite different than the competitive systems, much more graphically intensive," Reggie told CNN. "If you do a side-by-side comparison you would actually see that third-party games like Call of Duty look dramatically better on our system."

"The Wii U version matches the look of the Xbox 360 game and thus gives it an edge visually over the PlayStation 3 release, but unfortunately it comes up well short in terms of performance," Digital Foundry claims, "an aspect that is all-important to the playability of a COD title."

Reports from consumers also suggest that the Wii U ports of Darksiders 2, Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 suffer from performance issues over the existing Xbox 360 and PS3 editions.

Wii U's technical capability is said to be roughly comparable to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, although some developers have suggested that the console's "horrible, slow CPU" could bottleneck the system.

But as for being left behind once Microsoft and Sony's next-gen consoles roll around, Reggie says "we'll see".

"We know that, based on our own development, this two-screen gaming experience really is the next innovation that consumers are gravitating to," he continued.

"It's selling extremely well here in the Americas, already stocks are quite low in the marketplace, we're rapidly replenishing. And so for us, certainly the consumer is deciding that the innovation is well worth their investment."